Wow, this week flew by! I almost forgot to write a blog post because I was convinced I had already written one for the week.
Back to the Books
Hello Everyone,
I have spent the week organizing and hitting the books. I have condensed and organized all the boxes. It is satisfying to see everything nice and neat and orderly!
I have been reviewing the manuals on how to proceed to the next steps, creating the Collection Description and the Finding Aid. I have also been studying the Describing Archives A Content Standard (DACS) to help me understand what’s next.
I am excited to move on to the next and continue this wonderful learning experience. Have a great weekend!
Success
I’ve been experiencing the mid-semester blues lately,
especially leading up to the completion of my master’s thesis. Success and
failure have been looming themes in my life recently, and as if the Chaffey
Brothers could read my mind I came across this letter:
“We notice that it is your deposition always to lean on
others and we say in all kindness that if you are going to make a success
especially in this country you must stand alone and depend upon your own judgement
and rely upon your own strong hand to make business go.
We do not feel it to be our duty to you or to outsiders to
omit & point out the fact that if a man wants or expects success he must
take hold of the plow and never look back, bending all his efforts and energy
towards the land in view.
We will adhere strictly to a guarantee up to this time, but
beyond it you must decide to act for yourself.
We shall always take pleasure in affording you every
possible assistance in either a friendly or a business way, but all your
decisions must be from yourself & for yourself.”
It’s a good reminder that I have a lot of work to do to
finish my degree. My fate is in my own hands and my commitment to complete my
work can’t falter at the finish-line. If you are also struggling to find the
motivation to work I encourage you to take hold of the plow and never look
back!
Week Three
Hey everyone,
This was my third week exporting and renaming PDF files from Frankish Book 1 and I’m almost done! There were 500 scans that needed to be exported and 500 transcripts that needed to be renamed and paired. I am about to hit page 470, so only 30 more to go! It has been very interesting working with this book and tracking Mr. Frankish’s business transactions and correspondences.
Nothing new to report other than that!
Have an awesome weekend!
Hazel
PDF/As
Hi everyone!
now better understand the need for PDF/As. Although it is a repetitive and tedious process, it is important that PDF files are converted into PDF/As. Interestingly, I came across some PDF files that contained large transactions. The PDFs were from Chaffey Letters Book II. Although numbers on a letter dated in late 1800s doesn’t sound appealing, it is fascinating to observe the value of land during this time.
Problems with Processing
Hi Everyone!
This week, I officially started processing the Yao family papers, which is exciting but also quite challenging. Although I spent the first few weeks surveying the documents and took my time to draft the processing plan carefully, my proposed processing plan still proved to be ineffective. As I was sorting through the photographs in the collection, I realized that some photos do not belong to any of my conceptualized categories. Additionally, I discovered that when I was surveying the collection, my categorization of the photographs was not standardized. For instance, I sometimes placed the photos of Claremont boy scouts under the “people” category, and other times under “Claremont.” Thus, facing these problems, my week was not as productive as I wanted it to be.
However, it was definitely fun to do the detective work to find the connections between the photographs and group the relevant and related ones together.
Since the library will be closed on Friday in recognition of Cesar Chavez day and I usually work all day on Fridays, I will only work seven hours this week.
Hope you have a good week!
Marcus
Emily Hale & T.S. Eliot
Hello everyone,
File Verification
Hello Everyone,
This week I worked on verifying that the transcripts of the Frankish Letters Book 2 match the correlating scans, and I am happy to report that they do!
While I have been working on this, I have found myself reflecting on the intricacy of the penmanship of the letters. The handwriting is very beautiful and artistic.
Until Next Time,
Sydney
Ready for Phase 2
Hello Everyone, I have finally managed to make my way
through all the boxes for some initial processing. I began with twenty-seven
boxes and ended up with twenty-one boxes of sorted records. I have another pass
through to perform so I can double check my work, and a few odds and ends to fix,
but I have a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. I am looking forward to continuing
to the next phase in the processing plan next week. Have a great weekend!
Scans and Conversions
Hi everyone!